One size fits all desks are so non-ergonomic it's not funny. The trouble is that user height is a poor proxy for what desk height should be because how much of your height is in your legs vs torso also affects it.

Anyway, here's another data point:

I'm 5'4". I keep my desk at 24" when sitting, 41" when standing. I use an external keyboard plus a riser for my laptop to avoid having to look downwards at it. The riser is adjustable but currently set at ~14", IIRC.

The next ergonomic adjustment I want to make is to swap out my crappy desk chair for one with adjustable arms so I can sit closer to the desk and type with my elbows at a right angle instead of arms outstretched.

I get shoulder tension these days, but am pretty sure that's just good old fashioned stress. No keyboard/mouse related RSI since I switched to mousing lefty 10 years ago. Though my back and neck are less happy after a full day of meetings, which mean sitting with the laptop at a much taller conference table with no riser.

I do get wrist and neck pain these days related to looking down at my phone and contorting my fingers to hold it securely while attempting to use it one-handed, because despite being the smallest on the market it's too large for my small-person hands.

What I said about mousing lefty? I switched because of RSI that I'm pretty sure was related to a much too tall desk. At almost 36", my options were to sit with toes dangling above the ground, type with fingers at chin height, or perch on the very edge of my chair all day with no lumbar support. All sorts of bad things were happening to my body. Switching the mouse saved my wrists for a few months. Leaving the job, getting a desk at a more sane height, a keyboard tray (one without a 6 inch deep wrist rest), and a keyboard with lighter resistance saved my career.

Adjust your chair height before you adjust your desk height. When your feet rest comfortably on the floor with your knees at a right angle while sitting back and upright in your chair, hold your elbows at your side at a right angle. Your desk height should be about an inch below the bottom surface of your lower arm. Or if you use a keyboard tray, the surface of the tray should be at that height.

Then raise your monitor until you're looking at it straight ahead, not up or down. This applies whether you're sitting or standing. Most people these days are bending their necks forward to see their laptops. Those trendy silver Mac laptop risers are about a foot too short for most people. You probably need 12-24" of height added. Any external monitors may need raising too. And of course, plan to use an external keyboard and mouse.

I've seen a bunch of performance assessment systems, most of them being pretty bad.

The worst ones tend to boil down to: "As your manager, here is my subjective view of your performance over the last N months." which essentially rewards high visibility and self promotion rather than actual performance.

Sometimes the company would throw in a "self assessment," purpose unknown to me, which is likely not even read.

The ideal (in my view) performance assessment would be: "Here are the numeric metrics we agreed N months ago to measure your performance by. The data (collected neutrally and transparently throughout those months) show you met metric 1, 2, and 4, exceeded 3 and 5. Based on the transparent and mutually agreed upon formula, your raise and bonus this year are X and Y". Measurable and objective: Clear goal posts for you to aim for throughout the year. I've never seen this anywhere. I understand some sales roles get something like this.

VCs and shareholders don't come to shareholder meetings and say things like "CEO, I subjectively feel in my heart you are not doing a good job!" No, they look at the company's measurable, numeric results and judge by that. Why should it be any different with employees?

Obviously the hard part is coming up with those metrics so you're rewarding the right behavior and performance, but I'd much rather see companies put effort into coming up with those metrics rather than crafting the world's best self-assessment question or wasting everyone's time on 360s.

I've been on both ends of the performance appraisal spectrum; from ultra formal annual appraisals to nada.

Each and every time, the biggest predictor of a successful outcome was how well I was prepared. If i could articulate in a concrete, detailed way how much value I'd added.

It's not easy to do this. It takes time and effort to prepare. I used to search old emails, IMs, run user metrics, check old Microsoft Project charts, ask coworkers, reread all appraisals. [Shameless plug incoming] That's one of the reasons i built JobRudder [1] to help me keep track of all that stuff.

One other constant among the decades worth of performance appraisals. They're very messy. Feelings, first impressions, unconscious biases, stereotypes, cliques, politics etc etc etc. It's not particularly data driven or even objective. Be prepared.

TL;DR: If you decide you need a process, keep it very simple. If your company is small, trust that you likely already have a pretty good idea of how any one person is contributing. The faster and larger you grow the less likely this is. Either way, it can often help to make these thoughts and conversations accessible somewhere, especially when you want to recognize someone for their achievements.

In a 20 person company we focus only on 360 Feedback as needed throughout the year and set quarterly Objectives, while having regular 1:1 meetings.

Through our own personal experience, we've learned to keep it as simple as possible. Using only three questions during 360's (What did you do well? What could you improve on? and Is there anything else you would like to mention?) - we show the author of the feedback, but many also keep the author anonymous. It's personal preference, there are pros and cons to both.

Objectives make it easier to align with others and observe your team's progress over time. Regularly updating these saves a lot of energy when providing feedback to others if/when they're asked to provide more formal feedback.If feedback is actionable it's more likely to be useful and the smaller the company the more informal you should make the process. Small teams often already know what needs to improve intuitively, but it can help to record this somewhere so you remain aware of what you're working towards.

Most important though is recognizing and celebrating the successes of your team. It feels good to be appreciated for the work you do and encourages you to do more.

Disclaimer: I'm a developer for Small Improvements, a feedback tool. We work specifically with startups and medium-size businesses.

On timing, I like our approach: initially 9 months after joining, then yearly after. A year after joining for your first salary review is too long.

Our strongest tool for performance "reviews" are 1:1s. Weekly/bi-weekly with your direct manager, typically monthly (or more) with your business unit's engineering lead, and about bi-monthly with the head of engineering, though newer engineers have 1:1s with me more often at first [0].

Some of this is covered in our manager's faq [1], specifically about performance reviews, score cards, ranking, etc, and why we think it's utlimately harmful, as it benefits the insitution more than the unique employee.

[0] This is tough to do as engineering groups scale, but critically important.

It's not a perfect system, and it's ever evolving, but it the best I've experienced so far.

The 360 system is great for highlighting projects and contributions a top-down review might miss, and also gives the coworkers a chance to call out areas for improvement. Employees can game the system by exchanging positive reviews, but that is easy to spot. An honest review with proper critical feedback is valuable to an employee's progression.

The 1-1's work for general sanity checks, but require preparation from the manager to have an impact. Too many managers show up with without preparing and expect the employee to do all the talking. I use 1-1's to discuss career progression, establish SMART goals, and ensure that my report is happy with the work they're doing.

15five is still a relatively new process for us, but the perceived anonymity of a form allows employee's to more direct with their feedback. A report is a great indicator for what to discuss in a 1-1.

We just did a round, very simple: both of the founders sit down with each and every employee individually and ask a couple of questions:

- what was the thing you did last year you have been most proud of- what is the thing you did last year you have been the least proud off- what did we do as a company that you think was great- what did we do as a company that you think was bad

We got great feedback and engagement on these sessions.

Now obviously this wont work if you have a decently sized head count but in our case it worked just fine over the course of a week or so.

Not on HN, but I remember the initial demo of imgur being torn to bits on reddit. And when Joel Spolsky announced his idea that would eventually turn into StackOverflow, it was derided as useless because the work already had enough question/answer sites.

My personal favourite is Mondo (or Monzo as they are now called). Their founder/CEO posted here when they launched and the thread got very little attention. These days they are one of the most respected startups in London and are on the cusp of enormous success - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9638345

As someone who's gone through the inverse of this question, i.e. partnering with a non-technical person, I think the answer would be the same for both sides of the coin. The #1 thing I wish I knew back then was how important it is to determine early on if someone is all talk and no action. There are certain toxic people out there who will promise you the world, fail to execute, then bring you down with them. Do your due diligence. Trust but verify.

Making anyone a "partner" is hard. Really hard. Whether it is a co-founder or life partner. I will give you some general advice first before specifically talking about technical cofounders.

Don't just partner with someone you met on the internet right away. Do a project with them. Collaborate on some throw away stuff. Write a to do list together , whatever. The idea is to see if they can even commit to something like that. Build something with them even if not a software project. Go hang out with them, socialize, hit the bars whatever. See how they are.

I really think that a cofounder cannot be magically "found" but more like you worked with someone for a while and realized that they could be a good potential cofounder. You already trust them and know their work. Otherwise, you are taking a huge risk and it almost always ends up bad for both parties.

Yes, I am sure outliers are there but they are outliers. If you really want to find a co-founder, make sure you have enough time with them as non-cofounder before you even think of moving on with that step.

Remember, the real test of a "partner" in anything is not when things are great. It is when things go south and I can assure you they WILL. How your partner/cofounder behaves during the tough times will tell you all about them. You hope to have an idea about that before you even commit to be a cofounder.

Try to determine which skills will be most important for getting your business off the ground,

For example take 10 developers, even if they are all great they will have different strong points. Some devs will have a strong product design/UX intuition, others will be strong at building platforms/performance/scaling.

Also assess non-tech skills. Can they be effective with marketing, writing, speaking, negotiations?

The point is picking the right strengths for your mission, and the right strengths to complement your own skills is a big deal.

Your idea will get stolen, if it's good. Most likely, it's not good and your idea won't get stolen because no one gives a fuck about you and your problems, which is a good thing.

If you are in the .1%, then you probably don't need to getting regurgitated advice from the rest of the 99.9% (i.e. the retards like me that use this website who have no idea what the fuck they are talking about).

How many people use this site monthly, like 100k? Maybe 10k of those people have been in real startups and maybe 1k of those people have gotten non-trivial funding. Out of those 1k, 950 are retards. Out of the 50 people who can give you great advice, they all have other things they would rather be doing, and might not even login for a few weeks.

Unless you are famous, no one will steal your idea. The truth is it will be very difficult to get anyone to even care about your idea. Google, E-Bay were rejected many times, no one cared. The positive side to this is you can sharpen your pitch. Once you get strong positive (honest) feedback you know your story is getting stronger.

Do not pay for $1 of development until you have done lots of validation. Have you talked to experts in the industry? How many potential customers said they'd be willing to buy? Have you spec'd out an MVP? Have you had someone who's run a successful startup review your business model?

Once your ready to hire developers, you again need to plan carefully. There are 100 ways to get burned. Also it takes skill to manage their effort and know when things are going wrong.

You should find someone trustworthy and share it with them. I've had a few ideas which I think can be turned into huge companies - at first I was afraid to share, and after sharing, first with friends and family, and later with my university's startup office, I realized that no, they aren't interested in stealing your idea (the startup office actually advised the largest startup in the country, and they obviously didn't steal the idea, even though it wasn't too hard to duplicate on paper).

Obviously don't divulge it to people who can become competitors (like people here) before having executed at least a bit.

Nobody will be as enthusiastic as you. Heck, you'll have to explain your idea over and over, and shout it to the four corners of the earth once you want to start selling!

I don't know what the startup scene is in Germany, but if you're in a large city, there are hacker spaces, coworking spaces, meetups, etc. Not knowing anyone shouldn't be a problem, it would be ideal if you can enter a hackathon and establish some rapport and work together.

Speaking from experience, you have to be willing to work hard to make it succeed - my own project is languishing because I don't put in the hours (I work 10 hours a day). But put yourself out there, and validate early. Get it in front of customers.

I hired a freelance programmer and it didn't go all that well due to different expectations of his commitment. It would be great if you can build a crude prototype yourself.

hmm. on my own without much money to bootstrap with I'm just focusing on getting the mvp out. if it fails, I'll just write another app/pivot based on both feedback and empirical testing. I think that's the conventional wisdom for keeping a startup lean and not getting too invested in one big idea.

as for creating the code with less effort, I'd say either a good microframework OR a more monolithic one - both have advantages and disadvantages for a small project. the advantage with a node/express backend vs meteor for example is that you can just write the API and only add the components you need googling as you go. if I only want an android app that uses VERY simple auth and a very simple db that sequelize can map, I can then have more flexibility and not have to learn as much. there is less code to maintain often, not as much autogenerated code. I can also write a native android or react native app instead of being nudged towards a cordova/phone gap solution. the con is that if you're new or especially if you haven't worked a tech job before your code can get disorganized or buggy, especially if you don't know TDD (I still want to learn). also meteor has easy deploy solutions and a lot of magic.

similar dynamic applies to sinatra vs rails, django vs flask, etc.

as for sharing ideas, this doesn't scare me at all if it's just a chat with friends or likeminded people - actually I don't worry much at all. if someone else can make it /better/ and /faster/ than me then I just picked the wrong niche, I'll just need to pick one where I'm the best next time. I think it's better if my app can succeed in a market with perfect information because then I'm specializing to the best of my ability.

I'm still learning but this is the wisdom I've got from reading about how to do this stuff on your own and trying and just doing the work. I'm curious to get feedback on my way of thinking about this as I'm sure I could improve even further

No details but some insights;1) We now use 0 containers in production, only in dev/test env.2) One docker per background service, for now.4) docker CLI for now, later some GitLab CI tests5) My Windows workstation.

Thing i want to add on usefulness: To me containers are mostly a way to abstract configuration and document it in code. Lots of server processes go into a cloud, and this can help us iterate faster in the future.

I had a management visa linked to opening a company in the US in 2010. It sucked, because the company was so successful we sold it (for a nice profit), then I became aware that the US basically treated me as an illegal immigrant 10 days after my job finished. This is normal there - you have no stability in the US as an immigrant worker unless you go the green card route, which was never something I wanted to do personally (as an AU/DE/NZ citizen).

My first question would be why do you want to go to the US as this is a more important question for figuring out an appropriate strategy.

IMHO, honestly there's not much point in going to the US these days. You can get superior access to capital in China, superior access to far cheaper western education in Australia, New Zealand or Europe, and equivalent earning potential jobs in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UK.

Guessing you mean 150k. I came to the US on an E-2. The process is extremely poorly documented and arbitrary - the decision is at the discretion of the immigration clerk who reads your file on that day and the laws don't mention any specific dollar amounts that are required. 150k is likely enough to get you in. However, do your research and ask if that's really what you want to do.

You are supposed to come over, invest your money, then leave the country and wait for a decision (?!). However you can come over on a B-1 (business) visa and change status to an E-2, but then you're landlocked and unable to leave the US without losing your status and having to re-apply.

You have to renew every 3-5 years (again the duration is discretionary) and if you're denied you have a matter of days to sell up and get out.

There is NO route to a green card or citizenship. You are a non-immigrant alien. Every 3-5 years you have to hope you get renewed. You can be here for decades and if your renewal doesn't go through, out you go.

The E-2 is a very poor visa program to come in on if you plan to build a life here. If you don't really, really want to 1) invest everything you have in a business and 2) do it in the US and 3) leave again once you're done, it's not ideal.

Alternative routes I'd recommend looking into as a single individual with tech experience are:

1) Get a job with a US company who will sponsor your visa to come over on an H1-B, or, if you're a published expert in your field, an O-1. You don't have to be as famous/expert as you think - I have friends on O visas who are Senior tech people who have a few conference talks and published articles under their belt who have qualified. Both have a route to green card/permanent residency.

2) Get a job with a multinational company who can transfer you under the above visas. With companies look for larger orgs with in-house counsel who regularly handle immigration matters. Small companies are not well equipped to handle sponsorship and the delays/expenses may cause them to get cold feet at inconvenient times.

3) Fall in love with a nice American and get married.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions! Happy to share my experience. (Above isn't legal advice and is based on my own experience so may be wrong - talk to a US immigration attorney with E-2 experience if you are serious!)

I don't think the savings are enough, but it depends on the type of business/where you will be located. If that is the extent of your savings you have to consider living expenses/relocation in addition to the amount you will put into the business as an investment.

I would also look into consulting with a laywer that has experience in this field.

The first thing you need to know is that the OpenWRT project is basically dead and that 95+% of the developers went over to the LEDE Project. However, LEDE has not yet published a stable release yet. You can get nightly builds that are in pretty good shape though.

I would highly recommend an ipq806x-based system, if you can afford it. Almost always matched with qca9880 radios. These are modern 802.11ac wave2 systems.

ipq806x is a Qualcomm-Atheros SoC. Go to wikidevi for specifications on the chips and all of the devices I mention below.

Check camelcamelcamel for recent pricing info if buying in the USA.

The list would be:

Linksys EA8500

TP-Link Archer C2600 (Not recommended due to TP-Link going anti-OSS. Modern versions require signed firmware and other DRM junk)

Trendnet TEW827DRU (Not yet accepted into LEDE, but could be any day now)

The top issue that all of these devices have is that the 802.11 radio LEDs don't work yet because the driver is missing support for it. However, if you can live without blinking lights, these models are the way to go. This feature will almost certainly get fixed in the future.

I would tell you to go with the Linksys EA8500 if price/value is your concern. Otherwise the Netgear R7800 has a very active dev and probably has the best support. The ZyXEL NBG6817 looks really interesting to me, but I don't have one yet.

If $140-$200 USD is too much for you, look to some older 802.11ac devices. Like I said above, avoid TP-Link as they have started locking down their devices by removing serial ports and requiring signed firmware/DRM etc.

Your list here in comments is pretty good, though I'd avoid the TP-Link unless you can get one that is older (before TP-Link became anti-OSS.)

I know others have recommended this already, but I would also say that your best bet is to buy some Ubiquiti hardware. An EdgeRouter X + UniFI Pro dual-band AP is on the order of $200 from Amazon and has way, way better functionality than SOHO hardware of same price point, with the principal issue that it is enterprise hardware, and is very much not point-and-click to set up. I think the tradeoff in functionality and build quality is worth it, though.

I recently replaced my PC router running pfSense with an EdgeRouter X - at ~$50 the power savings alone will probably pay for it in less than a year, and the only thing I can't do with it that I could do with pfSense is create a standalone OpenVPN endpoint - so I'm moving that functionality to a server that was running anyway.

I have the Asus RT-AC68U/TM-AC1900. I bought it from T-Mobile for $60 and flashed it to stock and then put Asuswrt-Merlin on it (but you can use Tomato or DD-WRT). It does take a little work to flash it to stock (like Telnet'ing into the router), but it wasn't bad and for $60 I ended up with a wonderful router. There are guides online for flashing it back to stock.

If you're looking for information, I suggest SmallNetBuilder. They have very thorough reviews: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/rankers/router/view. It looks like the RT-AC68U is their #1 pick for AC1900 router now. It used to be their #2 pick under their previous testing methodology (after the R7000 Nighthawk from Netgear). That's slipped to #3 under the new testing and the Asus has taken the top slot.

Asuswrt-Merlin isn't such a radical departure from stock, but it has some nice features and allows me to do things like edit the etc/hosts to block certain things.

The Asus RT-AC68U is probably one of the top 2 AC1900 routers out there and T-Mobile is selling it for a song (even if you're not a T-Mobile customer). It's a little work to re-flash it so read a guide and see if you're comfortable with that. Or you could buy a stock RT-AC68U and get SmallNetBuilders #1 AC1900 router overall, for 2.4GHz avg throughput, 2.4GHz max throughput, 2.4GHz range, 5GHz avg throughput, and 5GHz range.

Why? I've tried many times to use dd-wrt, openwrt and tomato firmwares on my routers, but every time I failed miserably: it's either something stops working, or I need to schedule routers reboots and so. So I gave up. Since that time, mini pc [1] is the third system which routes my traffic, acts as VPN gateway, proxy server and so on on my home network and I've never been happier. With eero I've got even better coverage comparing to the previous Airport Express.

I've been extremely happy with this purchase, admittedly I'm a bit of a high-demand user (I host a number of minor services for myself and friends including TeamSpeak, minecraft, as well as operating two Xbox Ones) so I needed something with good port forwarding support and UPNP. Rock solid, straight DD-WRT interface with minor branding, shell access, and monitoring support. This router's been an absolute champ and I'd recommend it to anyone.

I used to run a modified advanced tomato (advancedtomato.com) on a few Asus routers. But the build process is terrible and I got sick of maintaining it. Looked at openwrt and lede, but still a pain to maintain.

I recently decided on the ubiquiti edge router x ($49), ac-lr access point($90), and pihole($50) on a raspberry pi for DNS. The pi also runs DNS crypt. But now everything gets regular updates and the firewall config and stats on the edge router are great.

- TP-Link Archer C7. This supports our office of ~30 ppl and has been bullet-proof since day 1.

- TP-Link N600. Cheaper but still 5GHz. Also super stable, I use it as a wifi bridge daily.

- I just bought a Netgear R6300v2 which will go in my home. Have not used it much yet but for the price it's an ARM core with a lot of Flash & RAM so I'm excited.

Caveats: I don't know if in practical terms new-ish TP-Links (later than Q2 '16) are harder to flash due to them supposedly cracking down on third-party firmware. At the time they were super easy, I just downloaded the latest from ftp://ftp.dd-wrt.com/betas/ and followed standard instructions.

This is not quite what you ask for and a little more expensive that some options, but I use a PC Engines APU2 running Alpine as my router+wifi access. Great little machine that is much more functional than typical home router hardware, and it boots using coreboot. A good option if you like setting up everything by hand.

As long as you can do without 802.11ac, make sure you get something supported by the ath9k driver, which IIRC is the only driver that doesn't need a firmware blob. So all the people working on bufferbloat etc. are using that driver for their tests, so you'll get the improvements first.

I have a TP-Link TL-WDR3600 v1 running OpenWRT. It was cheap, and works fine.

Direct from real world experience, a few points of architectural guidance.

1. Use WiFi routers for WiFi.

Avoid firewalling, NAT, authentication protocols, the strongest levels of encryption, or other packet changes/control on the WiFi Router.

Resources are always constrained. Mentioned processes consume resources and the load only appears under real world conditions that you did not anticipate or could not replicate in test.

2. Distribute (as much as possible). A little work/cost up front will save you down the line.

A lot of WiFi routers support multiple radios (IE 2 radios). That gives you three points of failure for every router - one for each radio, and one for the router. Take one dual band router down and everyone in the coverage area loses connectivity in both bands.

Separating these will provide improved redundancy, throughput, offloading, and etc.

What fanless mini PC should I use to run a VPN gateway at line speed? I see a lot of random boxes reccommended on aliexpress, but which one should I buy? Should I just get whatever one, as long as it has the right AES instructions? Or are some of them awful?

Very interesting question I've asked myself a year ago.I ended up buying an old Netgear WNDR3800 for $15, and put OpenWRT on it. And it works great!It has enough ROM to install most of the services you would probably need need (ssh, iptables, smb, shadowsocks, dnsmasq, time machine, dyndns, are running altogether perfectly well) and enough RAM as well.OpenWRT itself isn't perfect, and I had to setup an package building environment on my machine to install some packages (typically shadowsocks) on the latest stable build (currently 15.05.1). But it works. And it works great. Speed is good, and I don't see anything I would have to complain about that disturb my needs/usage. I like the modularity and I love having a real Linux I can ssh to as router.

I've been quite interested to read about the fact developers from OpenWRT are moving to LEDE. Maybe it could be worth it to wait - as I said, OpenWRT isn't perfect and I'm sure a lot of improvements can be done. I haven't tried LEDE though.But I think, for a small office/home network, just getting an (reasonably)old/cheap yet powerful, compatible hardware and put OpenWRT on it is quite a good solution at the moment.

I've used OpenWRT in different incarnations over the years, and at this point my suggestion is to forget about OpenWRT and buy some Unifi hardware from Ubiquiti. You get almost the same amount of control from Ubiquiti's pro line, plus the hardware is really solid and it all Just Works.

Now that the enterprise-level Ubiquiti stuff is so insanely cheap, there's basically no reason IMO to fool around with open-source router projects.

Among the open source router options, what's the best for multi-WAN and flexible QoS?

I was looking at switching from ASUS on Merlin to Tomato for better QoS and to try out multi-WAN that was added in shibby about a year ago. I really want the internet to be reliable and fail over to a 2nd connection and then back fairly seamlessly.

Am I better off using pfSense (or something else) vs trying one of these integrated router/wireless firmwares?

Years ago I started looking for multi-WAN and got the very disappointing Linksys / Cisco RV042. It worked, but the interface was crap and it lacked a lot of the features that even consumer routers had. For an office of up to 50 people (and 2x devices) we've been using an ASUS RT-AC66R on Merlin and it's worked pretty well in that it's rock solid stable for many months at a time, has a bit of features - now including nice graphs for per-host bandwidth monitoring, and basic QoS and multi-WAN. The biggest issue is that QoS options are limited and it's hard to know if it's even working properly. The multi-WAN auto failover seems buggy and that seems like an area that Merlin hasn't touched.

I recommend buying a simple Access Point (AP) but with enterprisy components, like xclaim xi-3, and treat it as a stupid radio device while running layer 3 services with DHCP, firewall, etc on a separate device (or a vm) with pfSense. This way if you have problems with radio signal, you can just replace or buy a different brand AP without changing anything on your network stack.

Pipe dream: take over production of AirPort Extreme from Apple, release the hardware specifications to the public, and make it easy for users to install their own kernels, e.g., NetBSD.

Reality: as someone else said already, PC Engines or Soekris are the best you can do. They make the hardware and let users make the software. These companies appear to have some longevity. Easy to run user-compiled kernels of choice.

Ubiquiti is not an option if you want to compile your own kernels. The drivers are proprietary. They make the hardware and the software. Users assumed to be incapable? Apparently they cannot survive selling hardware alone. Longevity of this company is uncertain. Humble opinion only.

The idea of these is to connect them to your main router and have a "protected Wi-Fi network" that routes all traffic through VPN, while you can always go back to your normal Wi-Fi network to not use VPN.

If anyone's interested in talking about it, hit me up at hello@tscr.io

It's not exactly what OP asked for but some readers may find it worthwile:

The Raspberry Pi is well supported. If you happen to have one that's collecting dust and want to have a look at OpenWRT. Or to try things without fear of bricking the main router. I use a spare v1 for "traveling". Add a cheap Wifi dongle, an LTE dongle and one of those portable USB batteries and you have something to play with.

I bought a netgear NightHawk R7000 (dual core 1GHz) this year and it is great. Despite it being connected by a wire through my ISP provided router, the wifi bandwidth is about 40% better. DD-WRT installation was easy and is solid.

Taking into consideration the do-it-all directions the linux kernel is heading, I am more in favour of security conscious solutions, such as an APU board with BSD on it. For myself, this is still a concept. I've decided to learn more about bsd, security and networking before jumping into implementation and purchase of hardware.

Especially right now, you need to attract candidates who are "passively looking": people who have a job, but would move given a good offer. I do freelance development and consulting, and I'm basically happy with that. I wouldn't turn down a great opportunity, but I'm not going to start the application process unless I know you can beat what I'm already earning.

I doubt you'll get anyone who says that salary range disclosed in a job advertisement is not a good thing, from the perspective of the job seeker.

The question you may want to ask instead is: "Does the benefit to the job seeker of having a salary range specified outweigh the loss of potential advertisers who do not want to disclose a salary range?"

If you're just doing this as a side project, with no expectation of making a business out of it, then you may want to lean more toward what benefits the user.

If you're trying to run a business and pay the bills, you might need to think more about how it decreases your potential revenue, assuming the job advertisers are the ones who are paying for your service.

One other thing: Salary range is inherently a fuzzy concept. It's possible to set limits (e.g. the range must not span more than $20K, or the range must not constitute more than 20% of the lower-end number) but then you have to take into account that an advertised salary range is not necessarily the same as what they're ultimately willing to offer you. And then you have to factor in benefits, etc., which can make salary ranges misleading.

Edit: One possible way to make salary range disclosures more palatable to advertisers is to borrow a strategy from matchmaking systems: The advertiser discloses a salary range, and the job seeker discloses a minimum required salary, to the website, which does not make any of that information public. When the job seeker submits an application for a job, they receive a notice if the advertiser's specified salary range does not meet their minimum requirements. This keeps the actual salary range out of public view and at least slightly difficult to estimate, but it prevents the job applicant from wasting their time.

A range helps to know if it's even worth applying. If I see a range, from X to Y, and my prefered salary is Y + 20k, It's probably worth talking to you because there's a chance I can make the needle move.

If I'd have to make the needle move by 100k, then I'm not going to bother.

If the range is not shown at all, I'll still apply, but I'll usually start with "While I negotiate salaries later in the process, my range is usually around X-Y, depending on the role".

Too many times I went through a phone screen, and when talk of salaries came up, it was just way off. And sure, phone screens are quick, but at that point I already had to deal with the silly pointless puzzles for 30-60+ minutes.

Too many employers think on one hand that they need hours of interviews to verify that I'm a top candidate, and on the other think that 70k is a competitive offer for me to waste my time applying to jobs without salaries.

As a current job seeker, its certainly helpful to see the range I can expect when the process gets that far. I might suggest that you offer two modes for input: exact and range. In the case of range, maybe, warn them if their range is crazy big. I've seen jobs recently in the market I'm searching in on StackOverflow advertising a range with the low end being 50% of the high end. That doesn't actually help me when deciding on whether to contact.

If you really wanted to go crazy, make a publicly advertised email field mandatory, also. If I find a job posting and can't send an email to apply for it. I, most of the time, skip applying for that job. I might fill out a form that asks for just, like, my name, email and has a file field for my resume, but, it still rubs me the wrong way to fill that out. Give me an email address and let me write a small personalized note with a link to my resume. When you present me with a form to apply it makes me feel like I'm just a new datapoint in your recruitment database rather than, like, a human being just trying to start a conversation about how we can help each other.

Everyone wants the highest number listed. This prevents employers from being honest, because that max range should be the MOST They want to spend, but to the applicant, it's the least they think they should accept.

It's frustrating as an applicant, and having been on both sides of this fence, I've stopped listing it because it's a very easy question to ask on a first contact: "Just so we're in the same ballpark, what kind of salary range are you looking for? I'm not going to hold you to whatever number you throw out because we've still got a lot to learn about each other, but I don't want to waste anyone's time"

Absolutely. Job hunting is an intensive task. Knowing the salary range before you apply for a job, is extremely important . Cutting out jobs that aren't applicable from the salary perspective saves you time and effort.

Having a clear salary expectation up front just saves both parties time and effort. One of the big reasons salary ranges aren't always public, is because it benefits the company, by maintaining information asymmetry. By but doing that, you're at least in a small way, telling me that you don't want to play that game and are more likely to be transparent with me about other parts of the process.

Absolutely. If I currently have a job (probably the people you want), the most companies I actively interview for at any given time is ~4, give or take. Any more takes way too much time and is difficult to prep for. I simply can't waste my time with companies that may take a significant chunk of my time and end up not being able to offer an acceptable salary. There's a big enough pool of jobs I know for a fact are within my salary requirements, so I don't need to have doubt. Some of these usually come from job postings including salaries, and some of them come from a recruiter (a good recruiter is a valuable asset for me) who know my requirements.

Of course, one of my terrible experiences was interviewing after a company pinged and showed strong interest. Only to be offered half of what I was making and been begged to take it because they are about to go big and shares.

I wish to know the salary upfront. I'll never take another interview without discussing the salary range beforehand.

Given that job titles aren't able to help me discover whether an opportunity is right for my next career move, salary ranges help me to gauge whether I'd be moving up a ladder and save me time from having to schedule something only to find out that they were really looking for juniors.

Were looking for a person with more than 100 years of experience in software development, coding everything from BIOSes to cloud applications, knowledge of all past, present and future operating systems and setting up secure networks. The applicant must also be able to juggle up to twenty balls and read hieroglyphs, be fluent in Swahili and dance like Michael Jackson (especially moonwalking nice to have at corporate Christmas parties)."

So, this is what is expected from you, it is only polite to list (including fringe benefits, in detail) what you can expect from the employer.

I'm a tech recruiter and job boards are one of the worst sources of candidates both for agency recruiters and companies. The best candidates aren't looking for jobs and hence will rarely visit job boards.

Companies like Hired & AngelCo are taking a marketplace approach to the hiring process. Arguably, the biggest issues with these processes is that you can't attract passive candidates.

If you can figure out a process that attracts passive candidates, you will win the recruiting industry. I think companies like HackerRank are in the right direction by being a platform for recruiting, but not in an overt way.

A lot of developers use HackerNews, but not for the recruitment aspect, but YC companies have an advantage because they can post to the job board.

As a developer, why would your job board be a massive difference to recruiters/companies? Chicken and Egg problem, but with subtle differences.

There's no point in wasting either side's time applying to a company that can't afford me.

On the flip side, if they're got very nitpicky requirements and are offering a huge salary, that's a good signal that they really are requirements and not just a description of the pie-in-the-sky ideal candidate.

Absolutely, even if the salary doesn't imply any commitment from the employer, and that it's not one salary, but an interval (like, $150k-170k). When I was looking for a job recently, I exclusively focused on Hired.com and AngelList, exactly because their postings have salaries.

Why does it matter? To me, it's actually not about the money, but about ensuring that what I understand of the job title is what the employer understands of the job title too. Job titles are currently very loose in the industry, and if I see a posting for a "Lead Full-Stack Software Engineer" for $80k, I will immediately understand that this title does not mean to me what it means to the employer, and will save everyone a lot of time.

I think it may depend a lot upon the candidate. I personally feel like I make a pretty good salary, and with many jobs I would otherwise consider applying to, I don't feel like it's worth the time to go through the interview process just to find out their max salary they can offer is a pay cut for me. Similarly if there is a job that looks interesting to me, but advertises it's range and it's in the ballpark of what I want, I would be MUCH more likely to apply.

It also provides a lot of information about what the job will be expected to do. With what I do, people are not going to be willing to give me the salary I want, while also wasting my time on remedial work when they could get someone much cheaper that could do those tasks. So by keeping my interest in higher salary jobs, I can try to limit it to jobs which hold more interest for me personally.

Here's the problem though -- often times, someone may have an open position or two, for a range of skill levels. So they interview, and determine what skill bucket the candidate falls into, and makes an offer based on that.

So the only way to solve that in a job listing, is to either give a wide salary range (50k - 150k, for example), which then becomes useless. Or to have one posting that lists a number of positions (systems admin level 1, programmer/analyst level 3, etc) with a set of skills required for each bucket.

Having enough salary is important, but it shouldn't drive your decision (as the employee). Not having enough money definitely matters, but at some point there are diminishing returns on how important salary is to your motivation, and future success in a role.

You know what I wish I had in a job search? Let me post a profile, not a resume, but give me a survey. Let employers search for me based on what I'm good at... where my strengths are. Focus the hunt not on "who has the best skills" but rather "who's going to round out my team". The idea that specific technical skills can be acquired easier than personality traits.

So here's the traits I'd look for. Every engineer has a mix of motivations, some care more about tech problems, others care more about business problems. Then honestly some are just more concerned about growing their career. All 3 personalities have equally important traits that are essential to a team. A good team should have a tech guy to make sure what it builds is maintainable, it should also have a guy who is always making sure what the team is building is valuable, and then frankly if you have both of these guys they're going to constantly disagree with each other... so you need another guy who will take both viewpoints into account and determine what's better for the company.

Absolutely. I am sick of having my time wasted by companies that pretend to want above-median employees, but whose pay scales max out at below-median dollar amounts.

When I say I want $120k to move to your city, because you asked me to give you a number, and you say "Uhhhhh... we can't even negotiate from that as a starting point," you had better start putting your maximum number on your call for applicants. Because I just found out you were lying when you said you pay competitive market salary for the job requirements you chose to publish.

I am also very unlikely to budge for less than the annual salary than I earn now times the change-in-cost-of-living multiplier for the best school district in your metro area.

Even though the wording of the question is great, I think most people will take it as "Do you think disclosing a salary is a good thing?" Everyone would definitely be more likely to apply if the salary is good, but less likely if it's bad. The answer depends on the amount disclosed, not on the fact it's disclosed. It automatically makes you imagine the "happy case" and say that YES, it's awesome if I see a big salary and I would definitely apply more. But reality is different.

I think it's an interesting point, but any results or replies are destined to lead to wrong conclusions. It's like doing UX research by asking people what they want instead of observing their behavior (i.e. prone to bias). So I wouldn't take any of the answers here as relevant.

All things being equal, if I had to choose between applying to two jobs, and one of them explicitly offered the salary that I believe I'm worth, then yeah, I would apply to that one.

On another note, one thing I've been thinking of doing, (and I'd be delighted if you did it!) is a job board that only shows positions with take home interviews instead of in-person coding exercises. I think this is a growing trend as people realize that they're missing out on good developers who suck at coding under pressure with someone looking over their shoulder. I've come across several threads on HN with people saying the same thing.

Hired.com does a good job of this, you look at candidates on the board (as a potential employer) and you put in what you think you would pay that candidate. They can decide if they want to interview for the job or not. As an employer nice bit is that you already know that they would already consider working for you at that salary. For the candidate they can see multiple 'bids' from different companies and get a sense of the market and also see if their own expectations are under valued or over valued.

Knowing the range is definite incentive to apply for a job or submit an application. Too many times a company will not list it and then the range is well below what I would be looking for. I will say glassdoor has helped a bit, because usually that is my first stop when an interesting company has an opening, that gives me at least some degree of what to expect.

I'm not looking for 200k but if you're budget is about 70k then I don't want to waste their engineers, managers, whoever or my own time.

Not just more likely, I flat out won't cold apply anywhere that doesn't have a range listed. I consider any company that isn't upfront about compensation as having something to hide.

Note: if you do this, mandatory salary field should be only numbers and dashes, because everyone will just do what craigslist does: "DOE", "Competitive" etc. See angellist for a good example of how to do this right.

Add EXACT salary for the job - very often final salary is equal to min. wage mentioned in range.

Also, used technologies at company - because another job offer for front-end developer that uses Angular1, Angular2, React, Redux, Preact, Ember, Backbone, Node.js, MongoDB, Photoshop, Gimp and has 10+ years of experience is just dumb. Let the companies write about their flow, exact tech stacks etc.

I think addressing the salary too directly e.g this is how much money give or take $5k makes the hunt overly focused on financial benefits, which as has been commented has substantial downsides.

I think that a standardized band should be selected. Substantial sized bands, to dissuade purely financially driven people. You want them, but also as has been pointed out you don't only want them. You need a range. Bands give security that we are having the same conversation. I have also been interviewed for roles where the salary being offered is substantially below market value. What a waste of time tbh.

Also some way of getting at the intangibles would be great. For employees knowing whether this manager fires regularly, his feedback in the industry, etc would be helpful when selecting a role.

Cultural questions with answers are also good.

There is a great deal not be done to help the two seekers find the right connection and it's quite shocking really how prosaic the tools are for recruiting when you consider the money involved.

I get so many recruiter spams, LinkedIn junk mail, contacts from former associates, etc. - most of which have absolutely no salary range - those that do and are high enough tend to stand-out in my mind, while a lot of the other ones are simply mass deleted every few days.

A range is helpful but if the company is unwilling to put their actual max dollar value up for highly qualified candidates (read: the range is not the real range) it might result in fewer high quality applications.

If a range is not listed but the job is something of interest to me, I would not hesitate to apply and then ask the recruiter / HR contact about the range and whether expectations line up. It's one call and might help make a connection or refer you to a different gig.

As an aside, anything that indicates "we're an awesome bunch of rock star ninja people with competitive pay and benefits packages" typically results in a tab close.

If the company's Target is noticeably low, then I really want them to put up the salary. I do however want them to be very honest about there range. This allows for me to be much more particular about what my other needs are from the company.

If they are paying market rates for their employees, then I don't particularly care. I'm comfortable with negotiating at the higher levels.

It looks like a company's range is dishonest, then I'm comfortable with having wasted their time when I am searching for work.

I would only apply for a job that doesn't have salary information if it was a large established company, where I could feel reasonably comfortable that they have a clue about what salaries should be, and a budget to actually pay it.

If it was a small business, especially if the position is the only one of its type at that company I would not bother making any contact at all without salary info - it's a total waste of time.

Nope. I'd most likely apply for something I believe will be enjoyable 8-10 hours a day, Monday to Friday from January to December. It's called employee retention and you should evaluate that metric yourself. If you let your employer handle that part it'll be about knowing how much will be your next salary increase. Which falls back to your question. Short term versus long term.

It depends -- if the salary is less than my minimum then it reduces the chances. If it is far more than what I expect, that also reduces the chance. The ideal range covers 10-20% more than I'm currently making -- that will increase my likelihood of applying.

The good thing about disclosing upfront is that it will save both me and the employer time down the road.

This is the one nice thing about going through a recruiter (that you trust). You can give them the range that you are looking for (a lower number plus other benefits, or a higher number if it is a higher stress place), and they can filter the positions ahead of time.

Why on earth would someone apply for a job if they don't know the salary up front? When I recruit people I always disclose the salary, it signals the level of applicant I expect for the job and saves wasting anyone's time.

Location matters. Jobs being offered on the west coast almost always beat my salary here in the midwest. But when you take into account the cost of living, it usually ends up being a significant paycut.

100% believe that Salary should be a mandatory field on your job board. It means the hiring team needs to have a budget for a role; plus has at least thought about the market rate and what they can pay.

It seems logical that more people would apply to jobs that include a salary in the post. I'd be far more interested to know what % of employers are satisfied with their hire if they included the salary or not. Additionally I'd want to know how many people they found were outright unqualified if they included the expected salary. My suspicion is that lots of [un|under]qualified people see a great salary and apply just hoping to luckily land the position. That's not say well-qualified people shun seeing the salary in a job post (as is obvious from the comments here) but how much signal:noise do companies get.

Traditional salary negotiation, which generally hurts the applicant, heavily favors a salary black-box. So, a job board like this would help people who are not interested in negotiating their salary but want to stay competitive.

In the 3 years I've had my blog I have gotten about 52K visitors. I didn't get any traction on sites like HN or Reddit but I did have a bunch of referrals from Stackoverflow and Microsoft forums. Unfortunately my site went down about 6 months ago and I haven't been bothered to put it back up. That means no new content in over a year

> I might potentially be hired to do some contracting (both development and administration) on a software system. Knowing my client very well, I am a bit worried that I might end up without any clear goals for when my job is finished.

If the requirements are vague then don't agree to a fixed price and charge by the day or hour instead. Ask for a small task that needs to be done, provide an estimate, perform the work while keeping the client up to date if the estimate is still accurate so they can decide what to do next and go from there for each task. Hopefully trust will build up both ways as you work through tasks.

You could both burn a lot of time writing up contracts for every small task instead of just getting on with it.

If the scope is not clear enough for putting together a statement of work of acceptance criteria as described in other comments, one thing that you could do is to start with a time-boxed contract, ranging from a couple weeks to a couple months, depending on the complexity of the project, to do requirements analysis. The deliverable of this contract would be a list of functional and non-functional requirements, at a reasonable level of detail.

The issue is that, for bigger projects, you start running into the problems related to a "waterfall" approach. As an alternative, you could look into how "agile" organizations approach their contracts -- basically by selling the ability to work on "stories" for as long as the customer wants them to -- and the deliverables for each story are very fine-grained.

Either way, without active involvement of the customer to either elicit requirements up front or validate your stories as you go, you'll be in for a rough time. It's probably better to have an honest discussion with them about this, because it's in their best interest after all.

Yes, you will need an SOW, (statement of work) that articulates very clearly what you aim to accomplish. Near the latter part you should have another section ( there is more than one way to accomplish this however ) that clearly states what the "acceptance criteria" is for meeting the goals - ie - spells out usually in bullet points reachable goals for the project that when met everyone agrees your end of the deal is met.

Along with this it should also cover your rates, payment schedule, terms, and what things cost if they fall out of scope.

Finally I find it useful to add a "prerequisites", and "disclaimers" section that say that work can't begin until you have things like write access to their git repo or access to their aws account ( or whatever ) and that the current SOW doesn't cover getting it into the App Store or bugs that come after the acceptance criteria are met.

Put places on this document for your company or self, and the other party and make sure you properly distribute and record the signed docs.

IANAL but have one, and the more you get into consulting and bigger contracts it's good to run things by a lawyer if it's something that's high value, with a lot of effort, or even remotely puts you at risk.

VR - virtual reality, isn't really all that interesting outside of gaming/simulation and training. AR - augmented reality, is where the real money-making opportunities lie. Lots of companies have field services/technicians who would benefit greatly from AR. It's not hard to see the transportation and distribution sectors also benefitting. Even healthcare. The upshot of it all being AR is where the action is, not VR.

Answering the open questions would be a good start. I'm a geek and a man of means. Maybe I'll go get one of those HTC Vibes. Seems popular, Steam supports it. Look, all I want to know is how much is it going to cost me to walk into a store and walk out with everything I need. If I get home and find out I need to place an emergency order to NewEgg to get it working, it's getting boxed up and returned. If I have to go digging through video card specs, no deal. Do I even need a computer to hook it to? If so, what OS? Will my 2012 Macbook Pro do?

Not a single one of those questions is answered by the HTC Vibe web site, at least not that I could find. So me, a tech worker with loads of disposable income and a willingness to take a bit of a chance on new tech, won't be dropping $800 on your new device. How in the hell does one expect the proverbial Joe Sixpack to jump on board?

When someone figures out how to move around inside VR. Right now you're stuck in a tiny room, but how awesome would it be to play FPS games where you run around and duck behind objects. Most htc vive games i've played have mastered shooting but I'm always stuck on a tiny platform or standing in one place.

Your friend and familiy do not have to understand your motivation. They do not have to understand your decision building a product instead of working for a "prestigious company". They do not have to be your friend.

On the orher hand, you do not have to give a fuck about their opinion. The said truth is that there are 7 billion people on earth and you can not make all of them happy with your way of life. But you can make happy yourself.

I read once an articel where someone was asked "And what do you do when the people say you have crazy ideas?". His answer was "I talk to other people!" Do not worry, there are other people out there who understand you. You only have to find them and listen to them instead of the naysayers.

When I was practicing scales to become a guitarist in my youth, my mom always came in and said "can't you play something we we know". My guitar teacher on the other hand said great and gave me another to practice.

You are making the mistake of "playing scales" in front of an audience who expect a performance of a final composition rather than a teacher who can provide feedback on your work in progress.

Don't talk to people about what you do unless you really think that there is a need or you know for a fact that they are the right audience. Family and friends are usually not the right audience for this. Tell them something vague like "Trying to do a few things of my own" and keep it to that.

Overall, don't sweat it. 99% of people don't get this whole bootstrapper thing. They are happy to be miserable slaves in their fancy brand name 9-5 job with zero job security (there is no such thing as a job security). Ok I should not go there. Some people actually like their jobs so I should not judge :)

You just smile, move on and keep doing what YOU want to do. You are not the one to do the usual 9-5 job working for someone else.

Join bootstrapped forums [0]. You will meet plenty of people like you who will not only listen but give you the advice, support and even mentorship that you may want.

It sounds more like a problem with your family and THEIR expectations than with yourself.

If you're able to make a product, you'll be ahead of 99% of people.

Don't be afraid to put yourself and your product out there. If you wait until you're not embarrassed, you've waited too much :) .

If you're solving people's problems, they won't mind if your product is not polished. Really.

Also, you'll learn A LOT from building your product, and especially from working with customers and feedback.

If it fails, you have learned some VERY valuable skills. I use what I learned building my side project a lot more than what I "learned" at my former day job.

To be fair, my own project is languishing (because I have a day job). I'd say go for it :) .

Look for support groups, I used to go to a coworking space which was very cheap and it was great because it had an amazing support between coworkers. Universities also have such spaces, and sometimes governments too.

I always found the "coder monkey" idea amusing. Programmers are the ones who have the ideas. Your intuition has to be fed data, and the best source of data about what programming can accomplish is having programmed. When I meet people who suggest that programmers are monkeys for hire, I always wonder, am I to understand that being a programmer is somehow a setback in having ideas about what kinds of things programming can accomplish?

Anyway, you're building something through your own initiative, and every day you wake up and think to yourself, "what do I build next?" Perhaps you continue thinking hard about this as you pour yourself a coffee or whatever. Then you go and build it, and if you picked the wrong thing, your customers will as a direct consequence get mad at you. I personally think that kind of responsibility is much more exciting than being managed.

There's a pretty good chance all this will fail, simply because most things fail. That doesn't mean it was a waste of time. It just means your time wasn't here yet, and in the meantime you face life with a bit more data than you had before. Maybe next time around.

As for the people who tell you your project could've been built in a couple weeks, ask them if they routinely say the same thing to students doing problem sets, or anyone who's just starting to learn something. I mean, it's just nonsensical.

Also, mean-spirited negativity is really bad. You basically just have to cut people who radiate it out of your life, or at least be disciplined about what you talk about with them.

That doesn't sound like pressure as much as it sounds like unsupportive friends and family. If they don't bring other things to the table (other than negativity), i would reevaluate some relationships. That said, honest feedback is important. You should have a small group of trusted advisors/mentors that you can trust to tell you how you are really doing, but in a constructive way.

None of my projects went anywhere, and eventually, I gave up. I used to have the rosy view that with enough work you'll get there. That's largely untrue. You also need to know the right people (connections) and be very lucky. I hate to be a downer, but you don't often hear this side of the opinion.

1. Ignore the critics. Unless they have something useful to say, don't listen to them. We live in an age of critiquing. Only listen to critics who are also producers themselves. Consumers - either they consume your product or not. Just measure it and try to get better at the metric each time.

2. Focus on creating things. Be a maker. Find joy in it. Regardless of how it comes out, if you enjoy the process, you'll repeat and get better at it.

3. Get in the habit of sharing. Accept that 90% of your work will be average and that's okay.

Finally, what you're feeling is normal. It's all part of the journey. Both professionals and amateurs face this fear in their own way.

Intellectually, you're on the entrepreneurial path, with a purpose. How you emotionally defend yourself is also part of the entrepreneurial path - we work more hours for less money (on average) because we "control our own destiny" which implies of sense of ownership over one's life that you can't get elsewhere working towards someone else's bottom line. That's probably a myth, but it's an important one for maintaining our psychological health while under the stress of under-delivering. Don't be confused here - as an entrepreneur, you will ALWAYS feel like you're under-delivering, whether on time, or on traction, or on product, or on revenues, or on team, or on awareness... That's an unfortunate part of the path. But it's also an important part of the drive to improve the product, improve the team, etc. Entrepreneurs unfortunately also have a high rate of depression - I'm not adequately versed in those personality types to make any assessments as to why. But as an entrepreneur, I can tell you that, personally, I face that stress every day and yet carry on because I feel like my work is important. I'm not building follow-on products - I'm trying to build first-to-market products, also with a purpose. So either that purpose has to carry you through these tough defensive discussions and resulting stress, or that purpose isn't sufficient, and you'll drop the product and/or the title entrepreneur. If you're going to own your own path, you either do it wholly, or you don't. Trying to figure out a middle path will kill the average person. Don't be average.

It sounds like you have two issues, your social group and your product.

I can't help you with your social group. It's up to you to associate with the dream killers or not.

The product market is very interesting and counter-intuitive. There are countless cases of where the best product is not the most successful. Spend some time studying sales and you'll find product quality is secondary to how you position it.

This may not make you feel good about it, but that's the cold truth behind success. The way I personally deal with the quality vs sales issue is to focus only on product quality and have my partners focus on what's needed on the sales side. Finding a partner with good salesmanship might be your way over the slump that you're in.

Take a long walk and put things in perspective. You are on your own with this and that means you have to stop caring what other people think. Not because they won't give you good feedback, but because that kind of feedback cannot matter to you in the same way any more. You don't have that luxury.

As a product developer, you owe it to your product to do your best with it. That means that your allegiance is not to your family when it comes to your product. When they give you feedback, bad or good, you need to take a step back and weigh it evenly with everyone else's feedback, scientifically, objectively. If you can do this, you can make a good product, or at least get most of the way there, while avoiding distractions along the way.

The whole thing about making a product is... it's a long, hard road. The reason for this is not because of the ups and downs or how much you have left to learn. It's just actually a long road... for anyone. If you start paying attention to feedback early on, positive or negative, and let it sway you, you are doing yourself a huge disservice. It's early on, your product should suck. You need to realize this, pack your sentimental feelings away, and get to work.

Do you know when you've made it? When you've finally hit the nail on the head and won the game? It's not when your parents or your friends or your sister is proud of you. It's not when you get your first positive customer review. It's not when you turn a profit. It's when you allow yourself to be proud of yourself, knowing that this journey you're on is tough as nails and you're doing it anyways. When you do that, you won't need anyone else to praise on you.

Managing stress and anxiety is a big part of working solo. If you're not doing so already, may I suggest you carve time out for yourself that is inviolate (for example, on Sundays you close the computer).

Remember that your first job is to keep yourself from burning out, or else all the other stuff you do will not matter. And try to notice patterns in your anxiety, and anything that is effective at keeping it down. Tend to yourself!

You don't have to prove yourself to anyone. I stopped trying a long long time ago. Anyone who thinks programmers are just "coder monkeys" aren't really worth even having a conversation with.

No one will understand what you are doing. You should read up on articles about what it is like to be a boostrapped company and the type of nonsense you will face. Perhaps others linked to a few helpful and motivational articles to get you started.

You need to have thick skin and confidence that you are on the right path. Enjoy the climb, even though it will be insanely difficult.

I started my boostrapped company barely making any money and now I make more than most people I know. Use that as motivation and realize that being on your own means you can exceed anyone's salary because you play by different rules.

Personally I have a lot of anxiety when discussing something when the original idea was mine. Where as if I discuss something that I made but the original idea was somebody else's I don't get anxious. I guess that just how I work.

Deep down I know most people don't even make it as far as creating something bad. So even if my idea is bad I keep going knowing I'm well ahead of the curve in terms of trying to create something in this world.

I guess my only advice is; learn to live with embarrassment. It just takes some courage - which from the sound of it, you already have.

As to the "Anybody could have done that in a couple of weeks". They probably don't know what they're talking about. Because if they did, they wouldn't be saying that.

I understand what you are going through, went through it myself when I was younger. The mistake I made regarding this was being defensive, don't lump all your family and friends into one pot and bark defensively at it. Never be defensive about this. Be proud of your product, ask them if they see any obvious errors with it, you might learn something because they are invested in helping you. They mostly care about you and don't know anything about putting a product to market. But anyway something might come out of it. And then for those in the bunch who are trying to make themselves look good on your account, just ask them if they plan to waste their entire life as their bosses bitch.

I found that when listening to advice, feedback, and praise, what is said is just as important as who says it.

A lot of people say things, both positive and negative. You don't have to accept it all at face value. It's hard at first, but with time, it's possible to tune into this. Accept what people are saying with a smile and a nod, and only take it to heart if it is coming from someone who is qualified to make that sort of statement.

When someone says "That's it? Anybody could have done that in a couple weeks!" and they have never built a thing in their life, just ignore them. As harsh as it sounds, their words are worthless. They may still be good and loving people, but in this case it does not make sense to listen to them.

I'm going through this, but as an experienced developer learning the ropes of SaaS marketing a fledgeling product. It sucks! I know what I am doing right now is sub-par. But these are stepping stones. Some of the feedback I get is harsh, but is easy to dismiss as it is coming from people who do not understand the present situation or don't have the experience to offer the kind of feedback they are trying to offer. On the other hand, a critique coming from an experienced source is worth its weight in gold, even if it stings at first.

Keep at it! It sucks now, and it's possible that what you have built right now is sub-par when compared to everything else out there. But this is just a start. You've come a long way to get here, and if you have a long road ahead. Just keep going and little by little you will get to a point you want to be at.

>According to my family, programmers are just "coder monkeys," people you hire to make your grand idea and that's how it's done.

Yes, tell that to the coder monkeys who started Google, Facebook, etc.

I don't know the statistics (and I'm not sure where to find them), but I'm guessing that the majority of successful tech companies had a "coder monkey" as one or more of the founders. I used to work for a private company that was started by 3 COBOL coder monkeys (yes COBOL - not that I'm a fan) that went on to be a $100+ million dollar a year operation (lrs.com). All bootstrapped, NEVER took a loan that I'm aware of.

>How do you deal with people saying, "That's it? Anybody could have done that in a couple weeks!"

lol (or at least smile to yourself) and ignore it. You will always get this. Later on, if the product is a success it will change slightly to "can you just make it do this, I don't think it will take long, just a couple of hours I could do it myself if I knew how". When the truth is it is at least 4 days of solid work (as in 32+ hours)

As for friends and family, be vague, don't tell them. If they are not technical, just baffle them with big words, throw in lots of buzz words so they don't want to see :)

Watch some Gary Vaynerchuk videos, seems like you need some motivation. There is one where someone asked him about expectations from others. His advice is basically give them the middle finger and stop making them an excuses for YOUR hustle. Also once you start selling your product you will soon see the market make your current doubter seem soft. In the sense you are trying to convince people to look at you in a positive light versus conviencing people that you provide value and they should pay you for it.

I am also a bootstraper, however went to college to be technical. However I can tell a majority of the top tier programmers don't have an once of hustle in them. They just want to play it safe. You learning how to be technical proves just how much you hustle you have in you, just keep at it.

At the end of the day clients don't give a fuck about how much technical experience you have or anything else other than your product. If the product is good and provides value for them, their wallets open. There is also vast evidence that having the best technically sound product doesn't mean a victory, people can be better at sales and marketing with a subpar product.

Look for hustlers in your life. If they aren't there, surround yourself with the content hustles post online.

Good luck man, go out there and kill it then just watch people change their opinion of you without saying anything.

I totally understand your pain. I'm currently working on my startup and I'm almost in the same position as you.

While I'm working at a company (because I have bills to pay and I'm just out of uni), my startup is bootstrapped by myself - and while it's tempting to get VC money, I feel like before I even consider doing that, I want to get something that can stand on itself if I don't get that funding.

1. ignore the nay sayers (unless they are your target market in which case take their opinions on the product and ignore the rest). you know what you want to do. you have a vision and you know what you want in life - most don't have that, and you have absolutely no one to answer but yourself.

2. you are learning and you are improving - that is awesome (because that means you know where you are lacking and where you can improve).

3.Finally, let's say you do fail (hey, a lot of startups fail), you have learned valuable skills which would be awesome for you to apply to either your next venture or at "the next big corp here" - eitherway, it's a win - win.

4. Finally, you choose being bootstrapped because you a sustainable business, you want to own your own business and in a way an adventure. So enjoy every momement of it. While this might feel terrible now, once your business does succeed, you'll have a lot more riding on you :) - So full steam ahead!

"That's it? Anybody could have done that in a couple weeks!" is awesome to hear. You need to be sure you ask that person what is missing and what you should build next instead of defending yourself.

All feedback is good feedback- just don't take it personally. The feedback isn't about you or your ideas, the feedback is about what someone sees in front of them.

Your ideas will change as time goes forward. People's reactions to what you build will change. You'll make dumb product mistakes. You'll build the wrong things. The only way to learn when you do that is to get people to look at what you're building and let them tell you why it's not good.

You're on the right track and we all go through this. Just calm down a bit and don't take things personally.

>> A few years ago, I wanted to make a product, but I wasn't very technical. So I decided to change that--I got technical.

You are a bad ass. I went from techinical recruiting to software engineering. In between I built a recruiting business powered by a Rails app that demanded more than I was prepared to give. That shit was damn hard, and only someone who has been through the business guy to coder guy transition appreciates how much of a bad ass you actually are.

>> According to my family, programmers are just "coder monkeys,"

They're being assholes and/or you are taking it too personally. I'm guessing you are simply stressed, and they don't know to be excited for you. Everything is taxing when you are exhausted, including putting up with people may simply be breaking your balls.

>> I want to make a tool for small businesses, I want to do it profitably, and I want to be proud of it.

Take care of yourself first. Your first paying customer may love you, rely on you, and wish you the best, but they ain't gonna pay the hospital bill for your self induced heart attack. They care about you, but not in the way you care about them, and you can't afford to be altruistic. Also, the majority of VC backed companies were funded because they had some combination of traction, relationships, expertise, and reputation you have yet to achieve. And if you want stress, take a few million now, hire people, and freak out when you realize you're going to run out of money before your product is worthy of the next round of investment.

>> "That's it? Anybody could have done that in a couple weeks!"

The Gettysburg address was written in a single train ride, and is only 272 words long. But it was written by a man who worked for years to build up the skill to create & deliver that speech to an audience that actually wanted to listen.

>> How do you do it?

Working my ass off, living off money I saved for taxes, and ignoring reality.

Ping me if you wanna vent. My email is in my profile. I'd be happy to listen, and I won't offer any unsolicited advice :)

P.S. I am a bad ass, too, which basically means nothing to anyone, except maybe you. Being the king of your own mountain isn't that impressive until it's tall enough that everyone has to look up to see the top, and even then, they won't understand what you went through to get there. It's good to be king, but it's also lonely at the top.

Does the term bootstrapping only apply to a product business? Or does it apply to a service-based business as well?

If it applies to service businesses as well, I know in my case one of the biggest stresses is dealing with the actual operations side of the business. Especially getting new customers.

In my case, one of the most effective things is to learn how to tune out the noise. And by noise, I mean all of its many forms - social media, comments from friends/family, anything that distracts you from the real work of your business.

I'd encourage you to stay independent and go as long as you can without taking funding. Keep complete control for as long as you can.

Have laser like focus on making a good product, and serve your customers well.

It'd be cool to talk with you further, and hear about your work. Good luck.

What's important is what your users and the market says about it. Take the negative in one ear and let it go on the other side. It's part of the journey - everyone who has a dream will invite doubters. Use it as fuel to propel you to success.

Create an MVP or even just a landing page before dedicating too much time into any project. Launch the MVP or landing page on places like HN, Product Hunt, Reddit, etc. to gage traction before before moving forward.

I appreciate the quote from Epictetus, a key philosopher of stoicism: "Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control."

Since you cannot control the reactions of other people, it's not worth your time to worry about them. If you can succeed at the things you can control ("Am I making consistent progress on the product?"), then you've succeeded, regardless of the reactions of other people.

From my own experience, one of the biggest drains on productivity in a startup is having zero support and confidence from the people closest to you. They are probably wrong to doubt, but it's hard to ignore them and keep pressing forward. I'd suggest trying to do something I never figured out, and surround yourself with people who believe in what you are doing (without being yes-men/women).

Maybe you're selling it wrong, or presenting yourself inappropriately. Namely, if I want to climb everest, and I walked up a local hill - it would seem silly to say "Look everybody at me I'm on my way to climbing everest!" - even though that could be a true statement.

Maybe you need to be more modest about describing it, especially if you can't handle the feedback.

Are you embarrassed by what you make because people keep putting it down or because you objectively know it's subpar?

If it's the former, then you should try to filter for constructive feedback and let the rest go. BTW, the same is true if they claimed to love your product. Don't get too excited either way. It's just a few opinions and the market will ultimately decide.

If it's the latter, then you need to focus your time and energy on fixing the product vs. "defending" yourself. Also, try getting it in front of a wider audience that's representative of your target market ASAP.

At the end of the day, you should work to be as objective as possible. Disentagle your emotions--put them on a shelf--and focus on the product succeeding (not you succeeding, but the product). If you find yourself feeling some self-reflective emotion, then you know you need to course correct your thinking.

All of this self-reflection (especially at the behest of detractors) is poison that amounts to trying to succeed while dragging an anchor. It hurts in two ways: it diverts your precious time and energy from the product, and it makes you less productive, creative, objective, and enthusiastic when you actually are working on the product.

As for the rest of it (thinking "what if it doesn't work, etc"), that's classic anxiety and it's a close cousin of depression. Ask yourself "what if it does work?" and keep moving. Truth is, more often than not what we work on will not meet our expectations. I've "failed" and pivoted multiple times before finding success and even then, not to the scale I'd hoped. BTW, on the final pivot before success, I've had people absolutely demolish the pivot. Had I listened to them, I would never have succeeded.

In sum, when you are thinking about or working on your product, focus relentlessly on making it better and testing it in front of "real people". That should leave little room for the counterproductive thinking.

Pressure is given by yourself. As long as your are happy with what you learnt, then it's all fine.

I am in a similar boat, but I have a lot less pressure because I saved enough and even if it fails, I have gained so much that my salary will increase for sure. Although the thought of having to work for other people simply keeps me going no matter what.

What would your friends and family think if you showed them something that looks like craigslist?

Just because something isn't owned by Fbook or Google or doesn't look polished doesn't mean it isn't or couldn't make money. Or if you're not working for Fbook or Google or working on working there that you're doing it WRONG.

My friends usually gloss over me talking about developing SaaS apps till I mention ones making $30k/mo or $60k/mo . . . that gets their attention. I love when they follow up with "wait, wait that's per month?"

Making a product/SaaS that is successful isn't easy, but it's something most developers can accomplish, it's not s sure thing, but definitely worth the effort if it's something that interests you. It's worth a shot/putting in the effort.

So if you're interested in products/SaaS keep at it. Granted most of us have day jobs or are contractors along the way to pay the bills till we hit "SaaScess" but don't give up on it because of what unsupportive family and friends think.

You do need to find a better support network, maybe fellow entrepreneurs/web developers, connect with other like minded individuals online. (feel free to connect with me via email HNusername at gmail, I'm always up for bouncing ideas around, being supportive, reviewing apps/products offering constructive criticism).

Don't share what you're doing with people who aren't supportive. Just give them a simple answer like I'm consulting, etc.

Making any web application is hard so making any functional application is an accomplishment. Sure you could sub it out to a group of coder monkeys and they could build it in two weeks. But there is more to creating a good web application that people will pay you money for that just the code.

I think being able to create a web application is amazing and enjoy it. I would compare being a developer working on your own SaaS to being in a band. You're creating something, gaining an audience and the sky is the limit. With hard work and a little luck you can reach $83,333k/mo+. That's amazing and if you fall short of that, $10k/mo isn't bad either.

Your family just might be concerned you'll have financial problems, your friends might be jealous or just not understand what you're doing. Hopefully trying to give you good advice, but either way don't let them dissuade you from pursuing your dream.

That said SaaS is a long ramp to decent revenue so you need a day job/consulting/freelancing/supported by parents income till then so plan accordingly.

Go get a job you're not an entrepreneur. People will constantly tell you - what you do sucks. It's rule number one in the wannabe-entrepreneur world. If you can't handle that part I'd suggest to go get a job. Otherwise, move one to step #2 - focus.

I'm working with http://www.direct-outbound.com/ to fulfill orders for Action Tea. It works fairly well, although the shipping prices are a bit tough, but that depends on the volume and the type of deal you negotiate.

I'm paying 1.60 USD per fulfilment item + shipping. And the whole operation is in the US, while I'm sitting in Switzerland and shipping worldwide, without touching the product. I'm doing low-ish numbers, but do know a lot of eCommerce experts who are doing the exact same thing.

There's dozens of 3PLs out there. Without any information its impossible to recommend any. What are your requirements?

Are you bringing your own shipping contracts? Some 3PLs won't let you bring your own. Is being cost efficient on returns a big deal? Do you need multiple warehouses for zone skipping or to optimize on delivery times? Do you care how you interface them(eg: flat file, API)? Are you bringing your own packaging?Do want to optimize on cost or prefer more features?

Every 3PL is different and cater to different markets. For example newgistics specializes in returns and handles returns for a lot of the big companies even though they might not be doing the fulfillment. They also have APIs with their custom WMS(warehouse management system). Some companies have lots automation and technology(pick to light, , sorting machines) and some have none. Automation is very helpful if your sending the same stuff over and the shipments are very similar. Sorting will save you lots of money if you own your own shipping contracts and you can presort your daily orders if you have decent volume.

I've used http://www.shipwire.com/ in the past with a fair amount of happiness. Decent API's, not a horrible cost, and minimal hassles (I had issues with shrink and damage at Amazon warehouses, haven't had the same issues at Shipwire yet).

I don't have experience with either, but I believe both UPS and FedEx have logistics and fulfillment services. I used to see a lot of online orders coming out of UPS facilities based on the shipping labels.

I was working as a corporate lawyer, and I posted a Show HN [1] before going to lunch one day. I came back and it was at #1, and it stayed there for over 12 hours. This led to a feature in Fast Company [2] and press in over 20 different languages. After winning a couple startup competitions, I quit my day job and now do BeeLine Reader [3] full-time.

We have 70k users on our first-party tools, plus many more on our licensed products. Our tech is licensed by the CA Public Libraries, CNET, Bookshare, and others. Our funding comes from the Intel Edu Accelerator (ICAP) as well as various awards for education and social-impact entrepreneurship [4].

I really appreciate the feedback from the community, which helped me understand what the market opportunity was and what our customer segments are (didn't realize how big edu would be).

Somewhat related, it wasn't Show HN but show YC that turned my side-project into a business. YC's Application has the question "what have you hacked that wasn't a computer". That question compelled me to create a hack that converted a cheap ($10 in some cases) bluetooth headset into a garage door opener compatible with any smartphone. It didn't even require an App. I posted a Youtube video and then submitted my eventually rejected YC application. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cAtso2tzMo

So many people watched that video they started asking me to sell the fully assembled project. Soon a polite C & D -ish letter from Samsung forced me to stop selling until I made my own hardware which I did in November of 2014.

5 years later I still have growth and sales. Next year I hope to make an enterprise version that would allow shipping companies to leave packages in your garage when you aren't home. I'll be sure to post that on Show HN. Regardless I owe YC a lot of gratitude as just the process of applying changed my life.

I doubt I would have finished as soon as I did without that initial attention to spur me on, and wouldn't have been able to wrangle up as much attention without that chance post on HN blowing up and bringing me visitors. (It ended up posted on Boing Boing, Metafilter, and various other places too.)

Now I'm a year or two from finishing a PhD in statistics and wondering if there's another book I need to write, or perhaps a second edition -- doing actual statistical work with real scientists makes the points in my book even more clear to me, and the need even clearer.

I was in college then and found making a well-formatted resume a huge pain when I was applying for internships. I met my Co-Founder also via that particular post and went full time on it after passing out of college.

We are bootstrapped, pay ourselves well and work remotely. Not sure if that qualifies as a 'big' success, but we receive these kind of comments from our users that make us super happy - https://www.resumonk.com/testimonials

We're still bootstrapped and fairly small (< 25 employees including the founders). We've grown organically to about 1 million users since then. The feedback we've got on our submission back then gave us enough courage to go from just a pet side-project to a full time business, so Big Thanks HN! That day was one of the happiest days in the history of our business.

Not shure about your definition of big but https://www.ghostnoteapp.com is doing pretty well. Living in NY with a family being the sole provider it doesent work, but had we moved somewhere less expensive it probably could and i am growing both rev, userbase and product

I posted an Ask HN to review my side project PCPartPicker about six years ago. Got great feedback and things grew from there. I went full-time, had to hire employees, etc. Not big like Dropbox, but we made it over the hump self-funded and without taking investment.

Amazing how time passes. It's been more than 10 years since I started, and it is still my side project and not big by HN standards. But it is making now many times over what I make in my day job as an engineer in Cambridge, and it's been featured in The Guardian Christmas gift list this year.

Five years, a name change and a complete rewrite later Contentful (https://www.contentful.com) has raised a Series B (total funding close to $20m), got ~100 employees and customers ranging from Jack in the Box, over Nike to Urban Outfitters.

It's been a wild ride, and it doesn't look like it's going to be over anytime soon :)

Yes, we immediately got picked up by an SF accelerator, then I was able to raise a seed round from billionaire investors Tim Draper and Marc Benioff of Salesforce. Then hired a team, got an MVP out to developers and gained a ton of traction, and now we're about to launch our stable/production-ready release!

Countly started as a hobby like 4 years ago and it was open source (still is, most parts). Now it tracks more than 11K Android apps according to Mobbo.com, which makes Countly #7 the most used mobile analytics platform. Team is still small (<15), bootstrapped and added a lot more features on top till then. Roughly 1900 stars pn Github. Not bad ;)

CertSimple was announced with a 'Show HN' post ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9210908 ) that led to its first paying customer. We did around 12K GBP in revenue last month and have Travis CI, CrowdCube, and Motley Fool as customers.

I think a better question is what are you looking for or what type of organization do you run or work for? A good security firm can provide application reviews to find everything from xss bugs in your web app to remote code execution in kernel components. This is done either black-box or source assisted and staffed with a team reflective of the size and complexity of the application.

Another aspect of security assessments can be network and infrastructure, these generally mean someone running nmap and looking for entry ways further into your network. I am biased but my organization almost never fails to find critical bugs or breach networks.

I'm not a salesman but my firm is NCC Group, we are a global pure security consulting firm, which means we don't make or push products. We also have tons of research https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/our-research/ which you can check out to see a sample of what you be paying security consultants for.

I used it when they were beta around 1.5-2 years ago. The pricing was great back then. $50/mo for a pool of storage, cpu, and memory you could use to construct VMs of different sizes.

However, there were hiccups in the beta. Namely, the block storage kept flaking out and causing kernel panics. The downtime from that caused me to stop using it after experiencing this issue in the span of a month. Their customer support was good, though.

I hope they resolved their glitches. Because other than the flaky storage, I really liked the feature set. Their networking stack was really nice too.

To make money providing services, you do what the customer asks. To make money providing products, you build what the customer needs.

I realize how tempting it is to lump it all under 'writing software' and calling it a day, but the culture at a services company is very different from a product company, in my experience. Plus it's really hard to give your customers a USP when you're essentially saying 'we do everything!' which you don't, unless you're 5k people big.

"From a company and team perspective I see no problem in doing both: services and products."

Yeah I'm going to have to disagree on this one. Sure it's fine in the beginning, but it's just a major pain once you start having regular release cycles and project deadlines that don't match, conflicts when some employees are more 'service providers' and others more 'product builders' (the two require different personalities, imo), cash flow and compensation differences and many more.

There are many companies who were in this position once, and all that I know made a choice of one or the other (usually product, that's where the money is if the product is good; services is a cost plus business). There were a few talks on this topic on the BoS conference in Dublin earlier this year, it's probably a recurring theme - I'm sure there have been more talks on it over the years.

So my question is, does it even make sense to put everything under one brand? Were hesitating to create too many brands, because it means having a lot of duplicated effort for brand-building and marketing. We're also an engineering company at the core and marketing and brand-building is not necessarily what we're good at or enjoy doing.

I currently see the following options:

1) Put both services and products under the name of Mobile Jazz. Products like Bugfender will appear on the website, blog and social streams of Mobile Jazz. The disadvantage is that were targeting completely different audiences and the mixed messages might be very confusing.

2) Leave the services branch continue under the name of Mobile Jazz, but create a new separate brand for each product with its own blog and social streams, e.g. bugfender.com. This way the marketing can be very targeted to each specific niche, however the disadvantage is that every product needs a lot of marketing effort despite the shared audience (developers).

3) Leave services continue under the name of Mobile Jazz, but create a new umbrella brand for products with its own blog and social streams. This way we can address the shared audience (developers) with just one targeted marketing effort. Disadvantage: were marketing developers in general, but maybe not enough the niches that our products are for.

Maybe Im overthinking all this. But I believe someone else must have been in such a situation before. Would be great to get some feedback or maybe just a different perspective.

1. Keep the "Parent Brand" going. In this case, Mobile Jazz. Have the mobile jazz website list all your "children" brands including Product ABC or Service XYZ whatever. Make a portfolio page showing all the children brands on this site (children can be product or service)

2. For each "child" brand (which is a product or service), setup their own website separately and market them as needed. On the footer of the website somewhere, mention the parent brand as "ABC is a sister/child company under Mobile Jazz". Also perhaps on an "About" page of the child brand, mention Mobile Jazz as the parent to establish more trust and reputation.

That way, you establish the individual products/services as their own brand but still link them all with Mobile Jazz.

If a child brand becomes huge, no problem. It still has its own branding anyway.

Fun fact: Did you know that the popular invoice service called "Freshbooks" is actually a child of "2NDSITE Inc". I remember freshbooks used to have this in their footer but now they have it in their terms and conditions.

I think that using different brands for products and services makes sense if your organization has a very clear division between the product and service parts and you have no gains joining that parts, like getting cross-selling or upselling.

In that case I would use a single brand for the services and another one for the product divisions. In the end they will be different business units with their own budget, right?

For instance, support will be very different for one kind of business than the other.

...Anyway...

DO use different branding -at least a minimal one- for all products just for discoverability. I mean, every product should have its website (like a brochure) and might have a blog, twitter account, facebook page, and so on. Use that accounts for _minimal_ stuff like announcing bugfixes or new releases. If the product goes well, invest in marketing (hire or buy) but it's very important to secure the social assets now.

The worst thing possible is mixed messaging, so what I should do is draw a clear line between Mobile Jazz "the services company" and Bugfender "the product". So each with their own marketing channels etc. However, to get traffic (potential customers) across I would think its a good idea to make some noise on the Mobile Jazz website (since it already is a strong brand) to get people across towards the Bugfender website to help build its own seperate brand. Also make sure that people can see that Bugfender is a product of Mobile Jazz (due to brand building), so I would make sure to include "Bugfender by Mobile Jazz" instead of just "Bugfender" in all my messaging. At least until it can stand on its own two feet.

I don't have any ideas about picking good names, but one rule of thumb about picking names is that it should pass the bar test. The bar test is simple: if you're in a loud bar, and someone asks you the name of your company, and you tell them, they should be able to go home and type it into Google exactly and know what it is.

For example, "Microsoft" is a good one, as are Captain 401K, Uber, and Stripe, because it's made of real words or are easy to spell and remember.

On the other hand, company names like "Shypmate" or "Cymmetria" are poor choices, because they sound close enough to regular words but are spelled differently. Another thing to consider is whether one word sounds like another. For example, a company I used to work for, RentJuice, was often misheard as "RentJews". I used to joke that it was a Jewish escort service...

Anyway, it's not a foolproof way to come up with GOOD names, but it's a simple way to identify names that are weak, especially when it comes to the ability to spread by word of mouth.

- If you go for something unconventional, it should be easy to pronounce (very important. "Google" was unconventional but easy to pronounce)

- Try not to use a dash or even numbers unless it is relevant like 411.com etc. Because if you do, then I have to think. Is it 1 or one ?

- Don't make me think if I have to type your domain on my browser/phone etc. Spelling should be easy too

- If the name gives me an idea of what you do, really great. But not required. For example, careerbuilder.com gives me an idea but monster doesn't. If I never heard of either, i can easily guess which one is related to careers and jobs potentially.

I used http://leandomainsearch.com and found a six letter domain that was made up of two English words. The name has nothing to do with my offering, but it's short and easy to pronounce / spell without any confusion.

Bonus: Since it was available, it only cost 99 cents for the first year (with coupon).

no. name picking is a rabbit hole, proving your product/service is far more important. pick something unique so that people can google it and come up with a meaningful result. If it becomes a problem, you can always change it AFTER you've proven your idea.

Be able to demo your projects, and talk at length about the technical challenges in building them.

That said, your best best is always going to be small / medium sized companies. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are mostly going to be looking for solid CS fundamentals in their interview. Unless you've taken a Data Structures & Algorithms class recently, you can forget working there.

I don't know how anyone could answer this question accurately unless they've gone through the process of applying for jobs in many different cities when they had no work experience.

In San Francisco I was able to break into the market - it didn't happen quickly - it took a couple of years to move from free websites for friends to part-time work to a full-time salaried position. I have a music performance degree. That was about six years ago.

My sister was able to break into a real job much more quickly. She had a degree from UC Berkeley in Oceanography and then went to Hack Reactor for a couple of months. After a couple of months of applying for jobs, she got a pretty decent salaried position. This was from late 2015 to early 2016.

When you are starting out, it seems like getting a job is a matter of

1) Having a portfolio of work demonstrating that you can code

2) Applying to a ton of jobs

The San Francisco Bay Area has so many jobs that you can apply to positions literally all day long.

If you can code well and get freelance gigs, and if you are completely flexible, you might want to consider becoming a global nomad. I'm sitting in Medellin, Colombia right now with a team of developers from around the world who are here because their money goes three times as far as anywhere else with this level of quality of life.

I don't know enough to say whether or not it's the best but...NYC is great for developers of a certain personality type. Specifically in the finance industry. There are a lot of corporate HQ's here that maintain large systems and have public and internal websites and services that require maintenance. Being friendly with Dev/IT staff at my current and previous employer, I can attest to the fact that they all say finding people who can actually code well is very tough. They seem to not think highly of college degrees, purely because the colleges are handing out degrees to people who can't code. That is the major reason they care far less about the degree. Another reason is that the IT guys in finance (and probably most places) care a lot less about "pedigree" or some kind of perceived educational status. Pretty much all of the corporate lawyers and execs where I am are all Ivy League educated. Dev/IT doesn't care about that if you can do the job - and they have easily testable methods to verify you can actually do the job, as we all know. The biggest roadblock is getting the interview in the first place if you don't have the usual background. In that case, you would probably need to know someone who works for the company to help get your resume in front of someone.

Also of note - I have seen a lot of very talented developers leave the financial companies I have worked for because they find the Dev work unexciting and they view their continued learning as stunted or completely nonexistent. They all seem to hate supporting line-of-business applications for whatever reason. That being said, it usually pays pretty well because these are business critical services that support either a large user base or are behind a large amount of money. Case in point - the brother of a friend of mine never went to college but was a self-taught programmer and is extremely talented - he works for a hedge fund running their entire infrastructure and makes more than double what I make.

If the corporate thing isn't your style, there are also a fair amount of startups here in NYC. But I don't have enough knowledge about them to comment on compensation, job stability, work culture, etc.

I have some experience with this since I went straight from high school to working in San Francisco. I don't know about the best city for someone without degree, but the best city for tech by far is San Francisco. To give you an idea of how dense the tech scene is in SF, the headquarters of Uber, Square, and Twitter, are all within two blocks of each other. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other tech companies just a few blocks further from there.

As for companies, I have found it much easier to interview at larger companies than smaller ones. When I applied to three larger companies (Uber, Google, Dropbox) all of who were interviewed me and eventually made me an offer. I also applied to six smaller companies, of which four rejected me without interview, and the remaining two wound up making me offers.

Since I was unsure whether I would be able to get a job or not, I deferred from college for a year, so I could always go back if I couldn't find a job. Depending on your situation, this may or may not apply to you.

Not web-dev but self-taught(did college for a few years but landed a job in industry so I didn't complete).

Your best bet is to target small companies/startups to build experience. Large corporations tend to filter out candidates without a degree and extensive experience. Prove that you can deliver and the rest will follow.

Also don't stop learning, you will have gaps and the only way to fill them out is to get off the comfortable path and dig into domains that you might not traditionally work on.

I get the impression that the Washington, D.C. area is probably good for this. There are a massive number of non-profits and other "associations" here with varying budgets and needs. Many of them will turn to larger IT consultant companies, but direct hire and contract work is probably still pretty solid in the area just because there are so very many organizations and they all want websites.

There's probably a general cultural or sociological alignment to such openness you could identify in an area but the best chances are likely where the demand simply outstrips the supply enough that companies will be more flexible in their hiring.

Personally, I have zero degrees and no formal education in ANYTHING, not to mention a general distaste for traditional classroom training in general, yet starting with a graphic design job that fell in my lap in 1998 (it's who you know...), I've simply developed my skills "organically" (?) and parlayed each position into the next, having worked as a web developer (at loosely-run non-profits and for very traditionally-structured government contractors), UX architect (at a very well-known company/domain name provider), UI developer (financial institution), and now as software engineer building web apps for a very narrow vertical market.

While my first "real" office job was Southern California (in an inland bedroom community 1 hour north of San Diego), the bulk of my career has spanned 2 geographic areas: Phoenix and Denver (mostly the suburbs, at that.) Relocating to both did entail factoring in the availability of relevant jobs but was more about what I wanted for my life at the time the decision was made.

It's highly unlikely I'd ever be a strong candidate for a Silicon Valley-type company or a startup, which is fine wth me since I'm a work-to-live type temperament and have never been the "work hard, play hard" type. But I also have a seemingly natural desire to be a good employee & coworker and like to be proud of the quality of work I do. Some of that might be a result of the "leadership development" that was unofficially required in my first job.

The foundations for my career are only based in teenage dabbling in software (coding BASIC on a TRS-80 in the early 90s, reverse engineering the HTML in webpages to build my own in the mid-90s) and a general technical bent overlaid with creative tendencies. Having a nearly insatiable thirst for knowledge probably helps too...

I'm german so can't answer your question directly. But what worked for me to maintain a career after quitting university to pursue my own startup was to work as a subcontractor for larger agencies. You get these types of jobs mostly through your network, have to do some hustling and accepting a low "first project" rate, but if you leave a good enough impression that leaves you as a "safe choice" you'll quickly get projects of ever increasing importance. After a while of this your resume should include big enough projects and brand names that your lack of degree is only a footnote compared to the experience obviously on display.

Self-taught web dev here. Just have a solid portfolio and solid github account. Focus on small and medium sized companies which will care less. Should not matter where you are. Two Lead guys at a former startup I was at, did not have degree. Chops matter.

I would imagine any city that's leaning more towards demand than supply is going to make it easy for a self-taught developer to get hired. (Assuming that developer is good. A bad developer with a degree will have an easier time getting hired than a bad developer without a degree.)

And I think most if not all of the larger cities are like this. I have personal experience with Boston, SF, San Diego. In 20 years I've never seen a market that wasn't good for developers.

I'm not really self taught as I did go to college but I didn't finish my degree. I managed to get my first job after a few months in the Silicon Valley (San Jose, not SF).

I don't know how much my not having a degree really mattered after that but my last 4 jobs were in Seattle. I suspect I may have been "leveled" at one of my jobs based on my not having a degree though, but I can't say for sure.

I'll throw Austin out there as the place where I met the most self-taught web developers, even with a pretty good computer science department at UT. The startup culture there is a bit more laid-back and open-minded, in my opinion, and I think this translates into giving anyone who wants to break into the industry more of a chance so long as they can exhibit competency.

Don't focus on location. College is a way to shortcut the "I have training/experience and/or am able to learn" requirement, so without that you're going to need to prove that you have the skills, experience or ability to learn.

Mucking about with location is going to turn into a side quest that will just distract you from the important things.

London is good. I'm a self-taught dev who moved from tech support to QA to engineering. There's a lot of work here and quite a bit of competition, but I wouldn't say not having a degree has been a problem.

I moved to SF from Houston, began self learning, and joined a bootcamp. It was financially stressful and terrifying and I'm still paying off personal debts accrued, but I believe I would have had a much harder time in a different city. I was a recruiter before, and I say, go where the jobs are.

If you hop on linkedin and search "front end" and filter to Bay Area, posted last 24hrs, you should see ~1000 jobs (maybe not this month). Per Day. Every day there are thousands of jobs opened up that are very open to the idea of a self taught or bootcamp educated person. Basically, this city seems much more of a meritocratic system than Houston or Austin, other cities I'm familiar with. Also, the pay is excellent out here.

I second what others are saying about portfolios. I always say, if I asked you to make pong in your given language, you should be able to do so in a couple of hours from scratch and be able to send it to me to run on my computer/phone. That's the level you want to be at and that's the kind of apps that should be on your portfolio.

I have gone into more detail of my experience at my blog: blog.calebjay.com, and the archive section links to my older blog with some other details about my transition. I'm also happy to speak with anybody here or privately through email (see my profile) that's interested in how they can make this happen for themselves.

I moved from a crap job, a crap life (financially, I'm a happy guy otherwise), and really no future to an engineer. I went from having no future to having a guaranteed career, forever, barring catastrophic global economic collapse. I really can't express the feeling of having the weight of future-worry taken off my shoulders, but I know I want as many people that were where I was at a year ago to feel it, and I will go out of my way to help any way I can.

That's the query I used in my job search, it worked quite well. Bay Area also has the highest concentration of startups and smaller companies that are notoriously open to non-traditionally educated developers. Try changing the location to Houston, Denver, Austin, Seattle, the entire state of Wisconsin, DC, etc and notice the difference. Try searching on angel.co in those cities. I think unarguably the Bay Area has the highest concentration of jobs open to self-educated developers, the question is, can you afford to live here for the several months it may take you to get a job?

There is no magic answer to this. You are just like 1000s of others who are trying to get a piece of the freelance pie. So you need to differentiate yourself.

Summary

You need to know how to sell and market yourself.

Some steps:

1. Build an online presence. Start a blog, a simple website whatever. Write about topics you want to focus on to get clients. For example, lets say you want to find clients in a specific domain say online learning. Write blog posts on that topic, If you cannot do it yourself, try to find someone who can write for you (not ideal but better than nothing)

2. Inbound marketing (related to Step 1 above). It is a lot better if clients can find you than you finding them. Take this free course from hubspot (no affiliation, just a happy student)

3. Share code with public. Get a public github profile and do stuff there (build projects. Anything. small or large)

4. Build an audience. Start a youtube channel. Record screencasts of what you know. Anything. E.g. How to install WordPress on your computer ? Plenty of videos out there but people always like quality stuff

5. Join existing open source projects. Become a contributor. Fix some bugs. Send a pull request.

6. Create an online course and offer for free on udemy. Join freenode and offer help on topics you are good at

There are many more but this is to give you an idea. Rinse and repeat. Unfortunately in 2016, you cannot just get freelance jobs by posting a profile unless you want to compete on the low end sites like upwork etc for $10/Hour.

What to do:- Approach potential clients- Reach out to people, start getting used to it. Even if it doesn't go anywhere, get in the habit.

- Reach out to old colleagues for no reason than catching up.- End goal: Build relationships. Build Trust.

As far as where to get your first clients, I've had real world success with the following methods:

- Mailing lists A lot of times people ask on mailing lists when they need help with something. Every once in a while, you'll get an email from someone with some work they need done. If you've been part of the mailing list a long time, you can approach them as: Hey, I'm xyz. I've been part of mailing-A for long time. I am (insert why you're suited to help) Ask to move the discussion offline to a phone call.

- Meetups Meeting someone here already shows you care/know the topic at hand. You can see them face to face. Socialize without agenda. Towards the end and beginning, listen for announcements for work/jobs. Approach them after the meeting.

- Recruitment agencies. Yes, I know you said freelancing but these agencies are hubs of work to be done. It's just a matter of how you position your relationship with client and recruitment agency. It's a good way to expand your network circle. Best time to make a sale is when you don't need to make a sale.

It will be easier to approach potential clients in similar industries with "Hey I work for client-a in your industry. I see you do great at X. I'd like to reach out and pick your brain if possible." This will open the conversation.

I'd approach freelancing with the mindset of: "Hey I'm good at ABC. I can help you with XYZ. Are we a fit? Is it worth us having a conversation to find out?"

My background/experience: I have more work than I can handle at the moment. (that's with only a handful of clients as I'm a 1man band.)Had to figure out the business parts myself through trial and error.

I recently made the switch to being a freelancer. However, I was a bit forced into it as the company I worked for split and we got acquired. I was technically a contractor there but there were some differences and it was not the best place for me. But, I digress.

First off, I had to be convinced. Having people who believed in me was a huge help. Granted, the people who were encouraging me to do this were also looking to work with me, they had some incentive to do this.

Second, I had some great relationships established. People that knew me and wanted to work with me specifically. It took a long time to get into positions to create those relationships and a bit longer for them to turn into something positive, but building (and maintaining relationships) is key.

Third, the thing that sealed the deal for me was going to a local 2-day conference where a lot of people were looking for work. I spent about $300 in travel and expenses for that conference (and I had a session there too). It generated some significant business for me and I'm still working with and talking to people I met there every couple of weeks.

Lastly, I had faith. Yes, I mean in the religious sense. At the end of the day, I believe that God provides for me and my family and that I am ultimately a steward of the people and projects that come to me. Where some might attribute things to "fate" or "happenstance"I've gone from "don't know what I'm doing in 2 weeks" to "booked out for the next 2-3 months" in a matter of days. Plan and consider the future but also realize that you are only in control of what you do and how you treat the projects and clients you have.

This will basically be a custom job. Every freelancer does it differently.

It would help to start by putting together a portfolio and then putting the word out that you are available. This can be started with just putting a blurb in your HN profile and on social media, where it seems appropriate.

That will not likely magically solve your problem. But it starts the ball rolling.

You can also participate in HN's monthly "Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer?" post on the first of every month. Keep your eye out for the next one.

It's nice to know that given a large amount of JS, this person won't create a single file and dump everything in there. I want to see code organization and deployment techniques. My concern is how the code will scale.

Most people have tiny code examples. A company looking to hire someone full time will need someone to create entire platforms where things like caching become critical.

You have to prove that you can work well with the existing huge codebase and won't make it horrible for others to read your code.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Mid Front end Devs". Do you mean not Jr and not Sr? I guess I wouldn't be quite sure how to express that either :|

I've interviewed tons of front end devs, all for product companies whose candidates are fairly different to an agency (agencies candidates with personal portfolios are likely more common). Having a portfolio at all is rare. Most anything that shows that you're active in your craft will be a plus. Github profiles are common but honestly they, on average, show near-zero public activity. Obviously there are outliers who are active in open source but my own experience shows that even very good senior devs at well-funded startups don't have much time for open source except in the rare case where a specific OS tool becomes core to their employment.

Seriously, anything that shows that you used time outside of work to create things is a plus.

Several things got taken out for "political" that frankly shouldn't have been.

The post of YCs Winter Reading List, as the list contained some political volumes, was the most silly to my mind. Book lists usually spin up excellent recommendations in the comments and are especially topical this time of year. Yet it got flagged off the front page and discussion died.

An international story completely unrelated to US or EU politics, Trump or Brexit etc.

I learned some people get really bent out of shape if you tell them they can't talk about politics for a week. I noticed heaps of people complaining. As far as content goes, I didn't notice a difference.

I am thinking about getting started on running it in production. I'd love to hear anecdotal stories with detail. You'd help me out a lot if you'd describe when you deployed it, what platform you used, how long it took, what phases or evolutions you went through, and what the biggest challenges were (people, technical, software, operational procedures, etc) - Thanks!!